HOT GALLERY: The Stars of the Cult-Favorite Series Firefly, Then and Now

It’s better to have lost and loved than never to have loved a brilliant, genre-bending, beautifully written show at all. Joss Whedon’s scifi-Western Firefly lasted less than a season on Fox, but its impact has far outlived the series. The cast reunited briefly in 2005 for the movie Serenity, butfor devoted fans—like us—there just wasn’t enough of what was, for a time, the smartest, most original show on television.By Nina Hämmerling Smith

Jayne was the mercenary you wanted at your side in a fight—as long as he was on your side (and as long as you were paying him enough to keep him there). The “public relations” expert on the ship, Jayne had a slippery notion of loyalty, but he was not without honor. Baldwin clearly relished the role, which he told the A.V. Club he approached “as a Western, with that sensibility. You can shoot someone in the back and rationalize it, because you’re out on the frontier.”